The Hard Place
by
Kathryn Allen
He wasn’t just
working out his contract in a dead-end job. Piloting the
nozzle of an icebreaker was fun and a challenge, Mike
reminded himself, easing the nozzle-head deeper into the
crack and pulling the pump trigger. It was the kind of
demanding, hands-on ride you couldn’t get shepherding power
stations in Earth orbit or flying transport shuttles across
the plains of Mars—where automated systems did everything
but take the heat for a foul-up.
Icebreaking—guiding the end of an insulated hose into an
asteroid’s collision fractures and pumping pressurised hot
water deep into the cracks to create ice wedges that split
the big rocks into smaller rocks, piece by piece—called for
the skill, judgement, and high-quality sensory data
processing power that only human brains could provide. At
reasonable cost, anyhow.
And eighteen months ago, asteroid mining was the smart move
for any pilot looking for a bit more spice and a lot more
space. Mike had been very happy when he signed on with
TiamatCo and joined Leviathan’s
crew.
Of course, back then Europa Station was still a bad joke.
No one sane thought the ProGeny buyout could turn it
around, or that mankind’s next giant leap—the Jupiter
push—would be happening this soon.
Nor that Behemoth,
one of Leviathan’s
sister ships, would end as a scatter of metal and broken
rocks that none of her crew survived to explain. A mystery
the insurance companies hadn’t been particularly happy to
pay out on—as if industrial accidents weren’t still a part
of life back on Earth.
Beside him, Leah cleared her throat.
Mike kicked the retract pedal. Ice shards followed the
nozzle-head, chipping and cracking from endless collisions
as they swarmed out of the gully into sunlight, twinkled
like new stars, and vaporised. In dark shadowy crevices,
the bulk of the water froze, expanding within the tiniest
fault lines, stressing the fabric of the rock.
But nothing broke off.
“Tough,” Leah said. “Looks like I scored the big split this
shift.”
Mike didn’t spare his co-pilot a sideways glance. He wanted
Europa, but losing his edge on this job wouldn’t help keep
his third application out of ProGeny’s bitbin.
Pushing the nozzle-head forward, continually fine-tuning
the tiny two-man pod’s directional thrusters so the
high-pressure hose they rode didn’t writhe like a salted
worm, he released another brief spurt of hot water into the
crack.
He didn’t need to check any read-outs. A slice of
rock—nickel and iron and silicate—shuddered and drifted
free.
Mike retracted the nozzle-head, carefully waltzing clear of
the predicted trajectory, but the slab twisted slightly and
a trailing edge clipped the asteroid. The impact broke the
section into three smaller pieces, each moving a little
faster...straight at the pod.
The hose made going backwards the hardest direction to
move, and the nozzle-head had limited retraction. Already
at that limit, Mike jockeyed the ride—cutting left lateral
thrust and letting the hose’s unopposed contortion add an
extra sideways jerk. He resteadied the pod once they were
clear. The rocks sailed on past to be scooped up and
funnelled through Leviathan’s
primary processing mill—smashed, sorted, and stored in her
hold.
Ice often stuck to a section, and when the ice caught
sunlight—instantly boiling to vapour—the rock behaved like
it had briefly fired directional thrusters.
“Showboater,” Leah said.
Mike glanced across, to check out her smile, and grinned.
“Only work with the best.”
“Chance would be a fine thing.” The smile barely faded, but
Mike noticed, and knew why.
Lately, everything came back to the Behemoth
disaster.
TiamatCo was new on the asteroid mining scene and still
paying off start-up loans. Scuttlebutt said they needed
cashflow to cover the raised insurance premiums, so two of
the six remaining icebreakers would be rented out as
service freighters for a traditional rockscraping
operation. Their bridge crews would be kept on, but the
nozzle-head pilots... With seven years’ job experience,
Mike reckoned he’d be okay. Unluckily, tethered-flight
hours didn’t count for much on a pilot’s résumé and Leah’d
joined TiamatCo right out of training.
There wasn’t a word of comfort he could offer that she
wouldn’t know for a lie. “Let’s give Ross and Wang a start
on the next slice.”
She chuckled. “You’re such a bitch.”
“Bastard.” Mike corrected, forcing a deadpan. “Bitch would
be if I pointed out that they make their best shifts after
I’ve given them the clue.”
“Bitchy,” Leah confirmed. “But true.” She checked the
overheads. “And we just lost the water.”
At the other end of the insulated hose were
Leviathan’s
massive storage tanks, full of melted main-belt comet ice,
but it was the icebreaker’s bridge officers who controlled
the supply. And—since the loss of Behemoth—they’d
been pushing the cut-off dead on shift-change, even if the
nozzle team was only a wedge short of making a split. There
was no leeway, no corner cutting, and by-the-book adherence
to the operations manual and duty rosters.
Overnight, half the fun had drained out of the job.
Mike powered down and turned off the window display. Secure
in his chair, he loved that the entire front half of the
pod pretended to be glass, but when he had to move around
inside the three square meters of pod space he preferred to
lose the illusion of being “out there.” He put on his
gloves and helmet, and struggled from his station.
Leah was small, better sized for getting in and out of the
nozzle-head’s cramped confines. She always had to wait for
him, and would stand by the hatch, grinning like he was a
comedy routine. A couple of weeks back he’d asked if
watching him do the cockpit stumble hadn’t got old yet—and
she’d grinned at him across the lunch table too.
He checked the pressure gauge on the hatch before he opened
it. The pod was too small for the icebreaker’s designers to
have bothered with an airlock at the head end, and anyhow
the hose was filled with air for the shift change—it
stopped fragments of ice forming. He and Leah climbed down
into the pipe, pulled the hatch closed behind them, and
followed the tracery of green LEDs to the
Leviathan,
single-file. Leah went first because Mike’s mother had
raised him right and he liked the view better that way.
Ross and Wang were waiting by the hatch when Mike climbed
out. Gloved but not helmeted. He touched fists with
Ross—the official hand-over—then kicked the hatch closed,
planting one foot on it, and took off his helmet. Not
exactly regulation, or what a safety inspector would want
to see, but better than standing around with their helmets
off and an explosive decompression on standby. “What’s up?”
Wang glanced at Ross. “Word is any icebreaker that’s not
meeting productivity by the end of their current trip is
history,” he said. “The bridge crews don’t give a monkey’s
because they’re not about to lose their jobs.”
“Old news.” Leah shrugged and started for the locker room.
Wang got in her way. She didn’t barge through, but Mike was
tempted. If the other two men had looked less nervous about
the confrontation he might have.
“The rest of us want to try shaking a rock,” Ross said.
Mike counted to three. “We’ve good cracks, she’s shedding
nicely, and I can’t see what we’d gain by—”
“There’s going to be a locked box swinging past us in about
thirteen hours.” Ross crossed his arms, but there was
nothing casual about the rest of his body language.
“The perfect size and packed with valuables,” Wang said.
“If we do the magic trick, we’ll be way beyond just meeting
productivity.”
Ross nodded. “And even if we only get a good partial...”
But a partial wasn’t the goal.
Locked boxes were tough-nut asteroids—ones an icebreaker
wouldn’t normally waste time on. Except, six months ago, a
couple of TiamatCo’s geologists had drawn up a plan for
cracking one. Drill the right pattern of holes, fill them
with ice, and then wedge a full thickness split through the
top layer of rock, and a locked box would shake itself into
bite-sized rubble. In theory.
Breaking a locked box was about meeting up to a challenge,
taking the tough option, being a man. And shaking a rock to
pieces would be—one of those things you did because walking
away wasn’t in your nature.
Almost as tempting as the idea of propositioning Leah—a
hell of a gamble, but a heck of a prize.
Of course, chances were you’d end up knocked on your arse
and feeling stupid. The big prizes came with serious risk
factors.
“And if it isn’t ripe, and doesn’t crack.” Mike shook his
head and started for the lockers. “We could lose an easy
rock and a couple of days sectioning we’ll never make
back.”
Ross didn’t get out of his way. “You’re the best
nozzle-jockey aboard—”
“Don’t think you get a veto on this.” Wang’s lip curled and
trembled, like a dog nerving itself up to bite. “Just
because you’re some hotshot blue-sky project chaser who
doesn’t—”
Ross grabbed his shift-mate’s shoulder. “Let’s go break
rock and give the man a chance to think it over.”
If Wang had said another word, or jostled Leah, or... but
they shuffled round, and went down the hose, without Mike
finding a snappy retort or an excuse to hit back.
Everyone knew about his Europa applications. Air, water,
and gossip were the three essentials of space travel, and
privacy was a luxury even money couldn’t buy. But people
got along living in each other’s pockets by pretending not
to know. Plain new-fashioned good manners.
He checked the hatch seal before following Leah into the
locker room.
“Wang’s only got a couple of hundred training hours on Mars
freight shuttles,” she said, shimmying out of her pressure
suit. “Not much more than me.”
Mike stripped out of his own, carefully not looking at her.
“You taking them seriously?”
“Not them.” She hung her suit, and checked it for wear and
tear. “It’s Esposito’s idea, and I don’t want to lose this
job. Even if you’ll be skipping off for something better.”
“Not better, just...” He could never explain.
At the first whisper ProGeny was recruiting, he’d sent off
an application. Filled and sent the forms again after all
the fuss over them taking on workers from outside the
membership of traditional ‘spacer’ associations. He didn’t
care. He paid his dues to ISPA because it made life easier,
not so they could tell him to boycott a company for hiring
catering staff whose job experience was sub-ocean.
And Europa had an ocean, anyway—under ten miles of ice.
He wanted Europa. And then, he’d be after the next job that
got him—
“Further out.” Leah grinned. “Yeah, I know that’s your
drug.” She patted his shoulder, and put her suit away. “I’m
starving. Get a move on, big guy, so we can go eat.”
“You want to risk the locked box.” If she did, then Mike
didn’t have any reason not to go along for the ride.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “The bridge crew’ll never go
for it and they control the water.”
*
Mike poured himself into the pod’s pilot station, pulled
off his helmet and gloves, and turned on the window
display. He stared out at UT-4589—the locked box Esposito
had named Phyrra—and waited for Leah to get settled in.
The bridge crew weren’t worried about losing their jobs,
but freight hauliers didn’t pick up the kind of
productivity bonuses they’d got used to. Rumour had
Chamrosh,
or maybe Ziz,
looking to crack a locked box and Hadhayosh
working a small
shoal of rocks that were as crumbly as good feta cheese.
Which meant the only way Leviathan
could be sure
of staying in the race was to risk everything on Phyrra.
Once the bridge crew gave their nod and wink, the guys in
processing agreed to pull long-shifts as ground crew,
capping off the stressor holes. By the time Phyrra came
calling, and for three days as they followed her,
Leviathan’s
entire crew was working at Esposito’s crazy plan.
Mike and Leah spent their pod hours drilling and
filling—weakening the top layer of rock and putting in ice
to keep up the pressure when they moved on to the next
shaft. Then they helped drill the split line—a string of
holes like the perforations on a credit receipt slip.
If they were lucky, when they filled those holes the entire
surface layer of the asteroid would shed. If they weren’t
lucky, they’d have spent four days creating a humorous
monumental artwork titled “Stable surfaced rock with
ice-filled drill-holes.”
Once the groundwork was laid, Wang insisted on a ballot for
who’d tear the split. After the count, Ross and Staats
bundled him across the mess and Esposito turned up the
music so, officially, no one could hear them explain the
facts of life. He’d been the only dissenting vote. The rest
of the crew wanted Mike in the pilot’s chair.
Latest word was Chamrosh’s
split hadn’t taken their rock apart, but that they’d a good
enough partial to still be peeling sections.
Leviathan
needed better.
“The quickest, easiest way would be to start in the center
and go left, center again and go right,” he said, trying to
memorise the exact position of each hole in the split line.
“Shortest time between fills, and orderly,” Leah agreed.
Mike took a deep breath. “But I’m Leviathan’s
own ace hotshot blue-sky project chasing nozzle-jockey.”
She nodded. “That you are.”
“So I figure we start at the center and alternate filling
left and right and see if we can’t put a real wedge to
her.” He glanced across the pod.
Leah grinned. “They’ll have to sedate Wang.”
Flicking the power switches, he wrapped his hands round the
joysticks as the nozzle-head responded. “Esposito can sit
on him.”
Taking his time, Mike lined up with the row of drilled
holes and then hovered over the middlemost, as if it was a
practice fill. Too close in and you could get ice on the
nozzle, too far back and the water would evaporate into
vacuum. He delivered short, well-aimed spurts of water and
didn’t waste a drop in splashback.
He was good, and he could prove that any time he liked.
Leah checked the overheads, and the clock, and pushed back
into her seat. “The Captain’s blind-eyeing you taking both
shifts, but don’t count on him sticking his neck out beyond
that double-shift.”
“Won’t be any need.” Mike took another deep breath, and
grinned. “Hold on to your hat.”
Aiming at the hole to the right he half-filled it with two
shots and then dodged the nozzle left and did the same.
Then he filled the right hole, half-filled the next over,
and went left again. Swing and aim and fire, and swing and
aim and fire, and swing and aim and fire.
As he got into his stride, Leah wedged herself harder into
her seat. The pitching didn’t bother Mike, because he knew
exactly when he was changing direction.
Thirty fills later, Leah swore. “I think there’s a visible
crack.”
And there was, the slightest line, almost nothing more than
a shifting of the surface dirt. Mike didn’t take the time
to try and gauge if it was shallow and clogging, or the
dust particles were tumbling merrily into the dark and
adding further pressure on the split. Springing from end to
end was precision steering, and stalling on the rhythm to
admire his handiwork wasn’t going to get the job done.
“Okay,” he said. “Now we get rough with her.”
Leah’s laugh was cut into a gasp as the nozzle-head
lurched, and then she caught her breath again. “Sensors
show the crack goes down.”
Another ten fills each way and the split was wide enough to
send water into without risking any bonding would be
greater than the cleaving effect.
“It’s going to go,” Leah murmured. “It’s going to do it.”
She was staring out at Phyrra. “Do it. Do it.”
Mike grinned.
The communicator bleeped, and Leah’s hand paused over the
switch. She didn’t want to hear any bad news and neither
did he.
Her finger flicked, and they heard a babble of excited
voices. “She’s going guys. The surface sensors are pinging
like crazy.” Mike thought he heard the pop and fizz of a
drinks can. “She’s shaking like a jelly.”
He pumped the next crack, and the next, and back for two
more holes each way, and then there wasn’t one crack
anymore—the surface beneath them looked like crazy paving.
Leah beamed. “You did it.” She slapped his shoulder, her
voice rising to an excited squeal. “You did it.”
“Just... a little...” Mike pumped water.
Water that vanished down into the rock faster than it could
freeze.
All the way down.
Phyrra wasn’t just going to shed the top twenty meters.
Mike backed up. Backed away, letting the hose curl a
little.
Leah glanced at him. “Mike?”
“She’s going to go,” he said, and looked at her.
Her grin was a sunburst. And he shivered down deep, as the
rock started falling to pieces—massive fragments of the
surface pulling apart from each other—because the pieces in
his head were coming together.
They’d focused on what they’d get out of the rock. But over
the past few days Leviathan
had
pumped thousands of tons of water into Phyrra. Water that
was now ice, lying in deep dark holes.
And if the whole asteroid broke open, separating so
sunlight hit the ice and it boiled, the fragments would be
pushed further apart, and more sunlight would vaporize more
ice... That could happen very quickly. Not with any
explosive force, but big chunks of rock would spin off
faster than anyone aboard the icebreaker was expecting.
Mike hit the intercom. “Back her up.” No one acknowledged.
The party on the bridge was louder. “Back. Her. Up. Back
the goddamn ship up.”
Behemoth’s
crew hadn’t been desperate to keep their jobs, but being
the first icebreaker to open a locked box... Wouldn’t that
have been tempting enough?
“Mike?” Leah’s hand reached to touch his—or stop him
uselessly jabbing at the switch.
“She’s going to go,” he said. She stared at him. “She’s
going to do the one-in-a-million thing and go completely.
And then the sun hits the ice and she really goes.”
Leah paled. Mike felt his crazy mad instinctive
couldn’t-be-happening panic turn into a stone cold
certainty.
All he had to do was look at Phyrra to see the truth. He
hit the emergency alarms; hoping that it would get them
noticed and not be taken as a celebratory prank.
“Helmet and gloves,” he told her. Grabbed at his own—even
knowing that Leviathan
itself might
not survive, which meant they’d just die slower.
“Mike...”
He didn’t look at her. “Helmets work better closed.”
“Mike, couldn’t we open up the nozzle, let her steam, and
blow what’s coming our way aside?”
He wondered if Leviathan had noticed yet. What they’d do.
If they backed up fast... they could all be saved.
He took a breath. “Maybe.”
They might be able to keep themselves out of trouble.
But Leviathan
was
a big target and pushing aside that many rocks—the
nozzle-head couldn’t be everywhere. Unless.
“I’ve got an idea,” he blurted, because he didn’t want to
say it at all. “We could die. And it wouldn’t be any kind
of fairground ride.”
“We can be heroes.” Leah chewed her lip. “Or we can sit
here and find out whether we die anyhow.”
If they survived, he should be a sure thing for Europa.
Everyone loved a hero. They got the good jobs, the big
bucks, and they got the girls. He could even push his luck
and ask Leah out. She might just be reckless enough to say
“yes.” There wasn’t anything to lose.
Mike would have reached out to touch Leah’s cheek, but the
gloves made that pointless. “You know all those stories
about people biting through their lips?”
She nodded, already looking sick.
He closed the visor on his helmet, opened up on the
nozzle—water streaming out and turning to vapour—and did
his best to wedge his fingers so the trigger wouldn’t
release when he blacked out.
But he knew firing vapour might not be enough to deflect
the rocks. Which was why he powered down the directional
thrusters.
The hose bucked, and twisted, and writhed. And Mike wished
he’d thought to turn off the window display, because the
stars and rocks spun and jerked and blurred dizzily.
He felt the first impact. The hose should bat enough rocks
aside to keep Leviathan
from being
smashed to pieces while she backed off. But he was a rag
doll being shaken by a terrier, and there was pain, and the
sick dizziness, and a terrifying numbness. And darkness.
They were going to live, he promised himself.
He had to, because he hadn’t kissed Leah yet.
Copyright
2009 by Kathryn Allen